Courgettes and Fennel

Update August 2012

The plot goes on and I am now in my seventh season. With various changes of assisting personnel over the years, there are now a couple of excellent regular helpers who make the challenge of maintaining a five-rod plot just about surmountable.

With each year I become less adventurous in that I no longer feel a pressure or urge to attempt to grow something from every page of the seed catalogue. Yet with this seeming diminution of ambition comes a better understanding of what grows well on the land and how to get the best of what is already present (i.e. tons of wonderful fruit trees and bushes). I rarely buy seeds now, but prefer to save my own – rather haphazardly – visit seed swaps, accept gifts from more experienced growers (thanks, Dad), or make use of whatever seeded itself from the previous season, ignoring the dire warnings about the risks of doing this which I’m sure are put about by the seed industry!

All decisions relating to the allotment have been made in part through a proper appreciation of the time available to me to spend there, which is very limited. So, planting by the phases of the moon has been abandoned: even if the weather were agreeable to it, I simply could not be at the plot carrying out the required task at the allocated time for perfect biodynamic success, no matter how appealing the idea.

The challenge of this season, apart from getting anything to grow at all with the poor excuse for a summer endured by the British isles for most of it, has been rescuing the crop from snails and slugs. Frankly, we have given up and surrended our beans and almost anything else with tender green shoots to the slimy little munchers. But gooseberries were good, apples seem to be OK, potatoes plentiful; and marjoram and oregano have been great, oddly enough for Mediterranean plants in such lack of sun. The season isn’t over yet and anyway, the Jerusalem artichokes are unlikely to let us down come November, by which time I should have finished eating the last lot (they keep for a long, long time in the fridge).

Thanks for reading, and happy growing.

 

Update 5 October 2008

A third season at the plot is nearly over. Progress this year has been complicated by changing work hours, house moves, travel and a few other factors that have made growing fruit and veg less of a priority. Trying to manage an allotment without any form of transport has always been a challenge. Now that there’s only one person to man (these days ‘woman’) the plot, it has been neglected at times.

Nevertheless, progress continued. Much of the produce was of good quality, but small quantity. A few new crops made an appearance.

Grown or growing for the first time were:

Apples

Charlotte potatoes

Globe artichokes (planted last year, produced this year)

Nasturtiums

Red onions

Tromba di Albenga squash

Familiar crops:

Beetroot

Broad beans

King Edwards potatoes (second generation, from some left in last season)

Onions (Sturon)

Round courgettes

Spinach beet

Sunflowers (one or two)

Various herbs

Other fruit:

Blackberries

Blackcurrants

Loganberries

Plums (Victoria)

Raspberries

Redcurrants

Rhubarb

White currants

Grew but scoffed by something or someone, or otherwise destroyed:

Cherries (three varieties)

Dahlias

Gooseberries

Sunflowers

There were no pears in 2008, which otherwise seemed a good year for fruit.

Update 26 July 2007

More than halfway through our second season, I can add a few things to the above list.

I got rather carried away when perusing the seed catalogue at the beginning of this year and have learned the hard way that growing everything from seed means being super organised; predictably, some of the more adventurous things like scorzonera are as yet unopened and even the plum tomatoes never made it out of the packet. Most of the flowers would have been a bit fiddly to grow from seed and as such we never got around to planting them.

The following lists are in no particular order:

Already enjoyed, some still producing:

Courgettes (Defender, Jemmer, Tondo di Piacenza)

Broad beans (Bunyard’s Exhibition)

Onions (Stuttgart Giant)

Potatoes (King Edwards)

Rainbow chard (various)

Raspberries

Blackcurrants

Cherries

Beetroot

Radishes (Sezanne, French breakfast)

Spinach beet

Rhubarb

Herbs

Not ready yet but in the plot:

Runner beans

Shallots

Plums (several varieties)

Pears

Loganberries

Still under glass (and started rather late):

Cherry tomatoes

Borlotti beans

Asparagus peas

In the plot, not expected to crop in first year:

Globe artichokes

Gooseberries

Didn’t fruit:

Redcurrants

White currants

Died or didn’t appear:

Garlic

Blueberry

Red poppies

Planted themselves!

Love-in-a-mist

Chamomile

Pink poppy

Lots and lots of weeds

11 March 2007

After years as flat dwellers with nothing more than a limited balcony space for growing a few herbs and flowers, in 2006 we moved to a house with a little garden and acquired an allotment. In our first season we successfully grew courgettes, runner beans and tomatoes (until blight struck). There were small crops of the currants, loganberries, plums and raspberries already in situ.